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Huma Abedin

Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney, a right-wing activist notorious for his birtherandanti-Muslimconspiracytheories, is using the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system while she was at the State Department to resuscitate the Right’s absurd claims about Huma Abedin, a close aide to the former Secretary of State.

Gaffney believes that Abedin is a secret agent for the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming in 2013 that “Ms. Abedin was brilliantly placed to run Islamist influence operations for sixteen years under the recently departed Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton.” His bizarre conspiracy theory helped inspire an ugly campaign against Abedin and other Muslims working in public service led by then-Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Gaffney today penned a brief, evidence-free op-ed for the Washington Times where he used the just asking the question style of journalism to claim that Abedin may have been using Clinton’s email system to contact Muslim Brotherhood agents as part of their effort to destroy Western civilization.

Her emails are of particular interest insofar as Ms. Abedin has extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s the Islamist organization whose self-declared mission is

The indispensable investigative group Judicial Watch has filed suit in federal court for access to these emails. It remains to be seen if they are provided and, if so, what they reveal about these ladies’ contacts with theMuslim Brotherhood – and their damage-control concerning revelations about Ms. Abedin’s connection to it.

American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer yesterday alleged that former congressman Anthony Weiner is running for mayor in order to “create an opportunity for more jihadist activity” as part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot, led by his wife Huma Abedin. Fischer, who on Monday said that Abedin seeks to “destroy Western Civilization,” claimed that Weiner is running for mayor in order to “pull back” on the NYPD’s surveillance of the city’s Muslim community and aid “Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood and their agenda to exterminate and destroy Western Civilization.”

Frank Gaffney is upset about the “fatuous” coverage of the marriage of Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner: “Weiner is married to a woman who has longstanding ties to a dangerous jihadist organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Like the other conservative commentatorsdemanding that the media report on debunked claims that Abedin is part of a Muslim Brotherhood secret agent, Gaffney is incensed “the mainstream media and many others are deliberately ignoring or papering over the fact that Ms. Abedin was brilliantly placed to run Islamist influence operations for sixteen years under the recently departed Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton.”

Brooke Goldstein of the Lawfare Project is trying to use the attention surrounding the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal to warn that his wife and Clinton aide Huma Abedin is a secret Muslim Brotherhood operative. While on Fox News, Sean Hannity and Monica Crowley eagerly agreed with Goldstein’s claim that that Huma Abedin is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda.

However, Goldstein didn’t get such a favorable response on Fox’s Red Eye, where host Greg Gutfeld and other panelists laughed at her attempt to resuscitate the discredited smear campaign against Abedin.

“Why is Weiner so un-attracted to Huma Abedin? Perhaps it’s because she is connected with Islamists who want to kill us!” Goldstein said, before alleging that Abedin “poses one of the greatest national security threats of this administration.”

Goldstein then alleged that Abedin “knows” about her husband’s sexting ways but won’t leave him because of her Muslim Brotherhood ties, or something.

WorldNetDaily’s Diana West is out with a new column entitled “Huma Abedin: Muslim Brotherhood Princess.”

Of course, since this is WorldNetDaily after all, she somehow managed to link this to Obamacare.

West maintains that the health care reform law means that the Communists were the real winners of the Cold War as the “totalitarian” law creates a “super-state” that will destroy the Republic.

She argues that the “cover-up” of Huma Abedin’s status as “a veritable Muslim Brotherhood princess” is part of a plan to shield Americans from the “Muslim Brotherhood penetration of the federal policy-making chain”: “[Michele] Bachmann was crucified, by Democrats and Republicans alike for asking urgently important questions about national security.”

With our guards down to the Marxist-Muslim conspiracy, Americans will become complacent to the supposed Islamic infiltration of government and the dangers of Obamacare: “don’t worry. We ‘won’ the Cold War. Obamacare, here we come. At this rate, we’ll declare ‘victory’ in the so-called war on terror and, before you know it, become a leading outpost of the caliphate.”

Nationalized health care was one of the first programs enacted by the Bolsheviks after they seized power in 1917. Nearly a century later, the U.S. enacted “Obamacare.”

Who won the Cold War again? This is one of the questions I work over in my new book, “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character” (St. Martin’s Press). Can we realistically claim liberty and free markets triumphed over collectivism when today there is only a thin Senate line trying to fend off Obamacare’s totalitarian intrusions into citizens’ lives? We see perhaps a dozen or so patriots led by conservative ace Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, gallantly mustering forces to defund further enforcement of this government behemoth aborning. (Call your senators and ask them to join – or tell you why they didn’t at the next town hall.) How can we maintain that the republic endured when a centralized super-state has taken its place?

So, once more, who really won the Cold War? The question is better framed when we realize that the battleground where the Free World met Marx was also psychological. Consciously or not, we struggled against an insidious Marxist ideology that was always, at root, an assault on our nation’s character.

The most recent manifestation of victory over the American character shows through the Anthony Weiner-Huma Abedin scandal. This scandal is a paradoxical double whammy of both exposure and cover-up.

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True, the barbs of Huma’s ambition – as naked as her husband’s dirty pics – have broken through the gauzy chatter. But cut off from context, they, too, end up perpetuating what is, in fact, the great Huma Abedin cover-up.

It is not enough to analyze Huma Abedin as a “political wife.” Abedin is also a veritable Muslim Brotherhood princess. As such, the ideological implications of her actions – plus her long and privileged access to U.S. policy-making through Hillary Clinton – must be considered, particularly in the context of national security.

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If the Abedin-Muslim Brotherhood story rings any bells, it is probably because of Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. Last summer, Bachmann, along with four other House Republicans, raised the issue of Huma Abedin among other examples of possible Muslim Brotherhood penetration of the federal policy-making chain. They asked inspectors general at five departments, including the State Department, to investigate their concerns, but nothing happened – nothing, that is, except that Bachmann was crucified, by Democrats and Republicans alike for asking urgently important questions about national security.

This made the entire subject, already taboo, positively radioactive – with Huma Abedin becoming the poster victim of this supposed “McCarthyism” redux.

End of story. Never mind facts. Never mind also that in his day, Sen. Joseph McCarthy was asking urgently important questions about national security, too.

But don’t worry. We “won” the Cold War. Obamacare, here we come. At this rate, we’ll declare “victory” in the so-called war on terror and, before you know it, become a leading outpost of the caliphate.

Conspiracy theorists Frank Gaffney and Diana West yesterday took turns attacking Huma Abedin, the top Hillary Clinton aide and wife of New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, and insisted that the media is covering up her ties to Muslim terrorists. Gaffney and West, likeotheranti-Muslimactivists, encouraged Michele Bachmann’s witch hunt against Abedin. The two have long engaged in baseless conspiracy theories; for example, both arebirthers and Gaffney thinks Obama might be asecretMuslim.

Yesterday on Secure Freedom Radio, West accused the media and government officials of orchestrating a “suppression of the facts” about Abedin…just as they supposedly repressed the truth about the “Communist penetration” of the government in the 1950s.

She went on to say that Abedin either “lied on her security clearance form or someone had to intercede” in order to gain a security clearance while working at the State Department.

West maintained that Abedin presents a “nightmare” scenario for the FBI and scolded her for having the gall to campaign in New York with her husband over a decade after 9/11 attacks.

“This is the kind of nightmare that an FBI agent looking at security form, his head would be exploding,” West told Gaffney, “but somehow this woman got into this position and now continues campaigning on the streets of New York City where over a decade ago we were in ruins and ashes in smoke at 9/11.”

On Monday, People For the American Way delivered a petition with 178,000 signatures to House Speaker John Boehner calling for the removal of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Bachmann, one of Congress’ leading purveyors of conspiracy theories, earned rebukes from Boehner and others last year when she accused several Muslim-American government employees, include top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, of being secret agents of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The petition, to put it mildly, hit a nerve among Bachmann’s allies in the anti-Muslim Right. FrontPageMag, an online outfit led by David Horowitz, has published a fullthreearticles defending Bachmann and accusing PFAW of “smearing” the “vindicated” Bachmann by launching an “all-out war” on her. In one article, Robert Spencer of JihadWatch argues, “If they really had any genuine concern for the American way, instead of calling for her removal from the Intelligence committee, the People for the American Way would be calling for Bachmann to be appointed to chair that committee.”

Horowitz and Spencer aren’t the only ones coming to Bachmann’s defense. The Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney, who was the source of the bulk of Bachmann’s accusations against Abedin, and conservative columnist Diana West discussed the petition on Wednesday’s edition of Secure Freedom Radio. People For the American Way, Gaffney suggested, is part of the “Red-Green Axis” and should be called instead “People For the Islamist Way”:

Gaffney: I wanted to turn to a woman who has probably understood this jihadist enterprise, most especially the civilization jihadist element of it, that is to say the so-called non-violent -- actually pre-violent form -- that we’ve talked about in the book that you contributed marvelously to, Sharia: The Threat to America, namely Michele Bachmann. She has been savaged now for almost a year for having actually raised an alarm about some of this. What’s going on with her at the moment and what should our listeners be thinking about it and doing?

West: Well, you have People For the American Way, a leftist advocacy group, actually putting together a petition asking to have Speaker John Boehner to remove Michele Bachmann from the House Intelligence Committee. Now this actually all ties in to what we were talking about already because FOX has also savaged Michele Bachmann, specifically going back to last summer when she and a few of her colleagues were raising questions about Muslim Brotherhood penetration into the United States government. Specifically, one of the cause celebre was the perhaps penetration, her question of the secretary of state’s office with her top aide being Huma Abedin, who we’ve spoken about before. And this is one of these…

Gaffney: Closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.

West: Correct.

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Gaffney: I think what we’re really getting at here is Michele Bachmann is being vilified for having exposed some of that influence operation, penetration problem and she should be, if anything, lauded for it, not taken to task by the Red-Green Axis, as they call it, doing business under the form of People For the Islamist Way.

WASHINGTON – Today, People For the American Way will deliver 178,000 petitions to House Speaker John Boehner urging him to remove Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann from the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 113th Congress. Bachmann earned rebukes from Boehner, John McCain and others last year when she launched a smear campaign against Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, alleging that Abedin and other Muslim-American public servants were agents of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Michele Bachmann has used her position on the Intelligence Committee to spread baseless conspiracy theories and smear the reputations of honorable public servants,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way. “Speaker Boehner himself called her actions ‘dangerous.’ It’s mysterious, then, why he has chosen to reward her reckless extremism with continued access to sensitive national security information and a powerful platform for her agenda.”

“Members of the Intelligence Committee are responsible for the safety of all Americans,” continued Keegan. “178,000 Americans are sending Speaker Boehner a clear message: we don’t want our national security in Michele Bachmann’s hands.”

People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch has detailed coverage of Rep. Bachmann here.

Last year, after Michele Bachmann launched a smear campaign against Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin and alleged that there had been “deep penetration” by the Muslim Brotherhood in high levels of government, People For the American Way launched a campaign to get Bachmann kicked out of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. On the Intelligence Committee, she has special access to sensitive national security information, which probably shouldn’t be in the hands of a fear-mongering conspiracy theorist. But this week, Bachmann announced that she had been reassigned to the Intelligence Committee, despite the protests.

Last year, after Michele Bachmann launched a smear campaign against Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin and alleged that there had been “deep penetration” by the Muslim Brotherhood in high levels of government, People For the American Way launched a campaign to get Bachmann kicked out of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. On the Intelligence Committee, she has special access to sensitive national security information, which probably shouldn’t be in the hands of a fear-mongering conspiracy theorist. But this week, Bachmann announced that she had been reassigned to the Intelligence Committee, despite the protests.

Washington, DC -- People For the American Way is calling on House Speaker John Boehner to remove Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and two other members from their seats on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence after a series of irresponsible allegations against U.S. government employees.

Intelligence Committee members Bachmann, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland and Rep. Thomas Rooney were among the five Republican representatives to sign a letter to federal agencies baselessly alleging that a number of public servants, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin, have ties to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. The letter relied largely on phony information peddled by anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney.

Last week, Speaker Boehner called the accusations “pretty dangerous,” but refused to say whether he’d remove Bachmann and the others from the Intelligence Committee. Abedin has reportedly been placed under police protection after receiving a threat over the weekend.

“Michele Bachmann has never been a model of responsibility, but this latest attack is one step too far,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way. “Members of the House Intelligence Committee are entrusted with classified information that affects the safety and security of all Americans. That information should not be in the hands of anyone with such a disregard for honesty, misunderstanding of national security, and lack of respect for her fellow public servants.

“Speaker Boehner was right to call out Rep. Bachmann’s dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric. Now he should act on those words.”